


A Fortunate Venture

by GloriaMundi



Category: Pirates of the Caribbean
Genre: C17, Community: help_haiti, Historical, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-03-01
Updated: 2010-03-01
Packaged: 2017-10-07 15:25:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,169
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/66453
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GloriaMundi/pseuds/GloriaMundi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Shipwrecked and half-drowned; a gallant gesture; a taste of freedom.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Fortunate Venture

**Author's Note:**

  * For [the_cornettist](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=the_cornettist).



> Written for [**the_cornettist**](http://the-cornettist.livejournal.com/), who made the winning bid in the [**help_haiti** auction](http://community.livejournal.com/help_haiti/) and asked for "a PotC fic, preferably Jack/Norrington centric". First draft scribbled longhand on location, on a Fuerteventuran beach; resulting fic beta'd by the incomparable [**p0wdermonkey**](http://p0wdermonkey.livejournal.com/) on my return to less clement shores

The water boiled around him, froze his blood in his veins. Which way was up? There was light, sunlight through green water, but when he kicked towards it his lungs squeezed tighter in his chest and he understood that he was sinking, not rising. Something vast stirred the water nearby: he could feel the pressure of its presence, the silk-smooth currents eddying past him. He curled into himself, dreading the touch of boneless limbs, wanting to scream -- shouldn't one scream, coming up through water? "The air goes out, the sea comes in, and then you're done for, lad." Who was it who'd said that? Old Swan, his first captain, dead these fifteen years.

Drowning now, in sight of the shore (he'd seen the island, red and mountainous beyond its lacy fringe of breakers), would be a fine joke after everything he'd survived. But there did not seem any hope of salvation.

His men (all dead?) had been murmuring rank superstition. The _Dutchman_. Sea-serpents. Storms swirling out of a cloudless sky. All nature overturned ...

The first lieutenant, Mr Groves, had been bellowing orders, rallying the men: "Strike the topgallants! Drop the sea-anchor! Hold her steady!" _He_ had been at the helm of the _Dauntless_, trying to bring her about, trying to save her from dashing herself on those treacherous black rocks that rose like fangs from the boiling sea. Storm-driven waves had been breaking over the bow, drenching him, weighing him with water. And then a greater wave, clear as glass and green as envy, had loomed over him, had plucked him from the wheel as easily as a gull plucks a fish from the sea.

Something wound about him, clinging, grasping, and he could not pull free; pulled him down, away from the light --

\-- and James Norrington broke surface, gagging on a cry and gulping air, thrashing and cursing and dazed.

"Hold still," somebody said. "Commodore --"

He knew that voice. Knew whose hard grip had drawn him up to the surface, knew whose arm was hooked through his own.

"Hell," swore Norrington.

"Not yet, mate. Sorry to disappoint you."

* * *

Later, after his sodden uniform had been whisked away (doubtless Sparrow's vile crew would be playing dress-up, prancing around in it, mocking everything it stood for), Norrington sat in the _Pearl_'s Great Cabin, wishing that the sunlight streaming through the broad stern windows could warm him. Swaddled in mothy blankets, a mug of hot spiced rum between his cold-paled hands, he stared bitterly out at the white beaches and viridian shallows of the island that'd surely claimed his last command.

"Why is it," he said, "that whenever I'm in pursuit of you, Sparrow, I find myself washed up on some uncharted isle?"

"Just because it's not to be found on _your_ charts, Commodore, doesn't make it uncharted."

Jack Sparrow lounged in an ornate high-backed chair that might have graced some Spanish Don's parlour. If his recent immersion had inconvenienced (or indeed cleansed) him, there was now no sign of it. He drank his rum straight from the bottle, neither hot nor spiced.

"That there," Sparrow went on, with an airy wave at the distant beach, "is Fuerteventura. One of the Canary Isles, and thus a Spanish claim. Perhaps your little Navy should acquire some _foreign_ charts, eh? Since the English ones don't seem much cop south of Scilly."

Norrington lacked the strength, just now, to quibble with Sparrow. "Why did you save me?"

"Saved your Elizabeth that day in Port Royal, did I not? Oh, I beg your pardon: she's not _your_ Elizabeth no more. Tell me, Commodore, have you had your invitation yet? For the wedding, I mean. Mine seems to've gone astray."

"Sparrow --" Norrington sat straighter on the padded bench, scowling. It was remarkable how invigorating honest anger could be.

"Anyway, I'd hate for you to imagine that I reserve my gallant gestures for imperilled individuals of what's colloquially, though inaccurately, termed the fair sex ... _Women_, James."

"Commodore, to you," snapped Norrington. "So this was merely ... gallantry?"

"Why, Commodore," with a leer, "did you want it to be something else?"

"My men," said Norrington abruptly. "Were any saved?"

"Three dozen or more," said Jack Sparrow without hesitation, looking Norrington in the eye. He set the bottle down on the arm of his chair: Norrington reached for it, topped up the tepid dregs in his mug. "They're ashore, most of 'em --"

"You said this was Spanish territory."

"I never said it _liked_ being Spanish territory, now did I?" Sparrow raised a reproving finger. "There's those in the fishing villages as'll turn a blind eye to any shipwrecked sailors, be they Spanish or English or Bohemian -- long as they get a share of the loot, of course."

"My ship?"

"As I said: the loot." Sparrow reached forward, repossessed the bottle and took a hearty swig. "So, Commodore, what'll it be next, eh?"

"I beg your pardon?"

"Going to have me clapped in irons? That's most frequently what ensues from a gallant gesture such as I've lately performed for you. Or shall we proceed directly to the point at which we left off: to wit, a hanging?"

"Sparrow --"

"Or perhaps that much-noised day's head start was so you'd have twenty-four hours' grace to work out what to do with me if you caught me."

"_When_ I caught you," Norrington said.

Jack looked him up and down, insolent as anything. "Seems to me, _Commodore_, that the boot's on the other foot."

"How is it," said Norrington, staring past Sparrow at the calm green sea, "that you've sailed through every storm unscathed? How is it, Sparrow, that whenever we have you in our sights, the weather turns against us?"

Sparrow shrugged. "Terrible fortune you've had of it, Commodore."

"My men think you're …" Norrington fell silent. No rational man should dignify with repetition the rumours that'd murmured below decks. Witchcraft, curses, the black arts. Jack Sparrow must be in league with the Devil. The most improbable luck.

"I'm no magician," said Sparrow. "Though, now I think on't, there's been a mort of messy weather these three months. Maybe you've offended someone, Commodore. Maybe there's some heathen god's taken a dislike to you."

"Nonsense," said Norrington.

Sparrow raised his eyebrows. "Is it so? But you've seen dead men walking, same as I have: you've seen --"

"I've seen a pirate go free when he should've had a short drop and a sudden stop."

"Aye," said Sparrow, with a sudden sharp smile. "And given said pirate a day's head start. Though," an elaborate gesture, encompassing the pair of them, "it seems I've lost that day somewhere."

"Or I've gained it."

A small silence. Sparrow's gaze was unfathomable, intent: Norrington, swathed in blankets and fortified with rum, was no longer cold.

"Nobody knows you're here," said Sparrow, as if Norrington's thoughts were plain on his face. "Nobody knows you're alive."

"A state which I'm sure you'll see fit to rectify," said Norrington bitterly.

"How would that profit either one of us? Mind you," said Sparrow, leaning forward in his chair, hands pressed together in parody of prayer, "maybe it's time for the Commodore to be laid to rest, eh? Maybe it's time for James Norrington to step free of his rank an' taste a bit o' that freedom he's so _dutifully_ attempted to eradicate in others."

This was sedition. Treason. He shouldn't listen; he should --

"What are you suggesting?" he asked Sparrow.

"What d'you want me to suggest?"

The glitter of Sparrow's eye, the gleam and twist of his smile, the tilt of his head, the rum sparking in Norrington's belly: all conspired to make him seriously contemplate just … Desertion, dereliction. A farewell to arms, to service, to authority and advancement and his duty to pursue, prosecute, execute the man before him.

"Commodore?" said Sparrow, suddenly much closer than he'd been before, one hand on the bulkhead above Norrington's shoulder, leaning down: too close for comfort.

"James," said Norrington, and got his hand on Sparrow's sash, and tugged 'til Sparrow sprawled into his lap.

This close, he could smell the rum on Sparrow's breath, underlaid with a (not unpleasant) reek of salt and tar and sweat and musk. He could feel the tension in Sparrow's body, and the warmth.

"Come to think of it," said Sparrow conversationally, "I always suspected that pretty uniform was hidin' a multitude of wants and wishes, a --"

James kissed him; it seemed the only way to stop the ceaseless spill of words from that wicked mouth, the only way to still the pendulum of yes-and-no, duty and desire, inside his own head. He was a dead man. The dead have no duty.

Jack Sparrow kissed him back, gentle and yielding at first, then fierce as though _he'd_ started this … this … what was this? James knew what he wanted it to be, all right, though it was years since he'd let himself have that: a man's strong body, the give and take of equals, easy and free as breathing.

Jack knew what he, what they wanted, too, if his hand insinuating itself beneath the blankets was any indication. James pulled him closer, and the press of a hard prick against his own thigh was as shocking as sudden pain. Jack kissed and groaned and grabbed and shoved the way he did everything: teasing, misleading, trickery and distraction. His hands were never quite where James expected them; his mouth traced clever patterns on the stubbled skin of James' neck, on his bare throat, and sucked on James' fingers like a promise for later. He had, at least, stopped talking, though he was far from silent.

The taste of freedom was the taste of Jack Sparrow's mouth (rum and salt, where James'd bitten at that provocative pout); the smell of it was sweat and musk and the heavy sultry scent of the grease that Jack, grinning and gasping, produced from somewhere beneath the bench. James' whole body was tightening with lust, with sheer _want_, and with each hand's-breadth of skin he uncovered and each moaning demand he provoked, the Commodore was more dead, his duty more derelict, and James more free than ever he'd been before.

A day before (any day before this one), he might have tried to draw it out, restrain himself, make it last. Now, what he wanted was here for the taking, wanting and wanton, urging him on and in and _more_ \--

In the heartbeat after he'd spent -- Jack still writhing beneath him, sweating and whining and desperate -- James braced himself for the hammer-fall of conscience.

Braced.

Braced.

* * *

Jack's bed was more comfortable than the hard bench; Jack's bare skin was an unsuspected joy against his own. Jack's mouth …

"I'll have to swim ashore," James said slowly into the darkness. "I cannot be seen to consort with a known pirate. My orders --"

Jack's mouth abandoned James' skin, and began to spout argument again. "Thought I'd converted you to freedom, mate?"

"Not for long," said James honestly. "If I'd been the only --"

"Free as long as you want to be," said Jack, eeling up to lie beside him. "Free to turn your back on laws that put a noose round every neck, a cage round every heart. Leave it behind, James." His hand came to rest on James' breastbone. "You've a talent for freedom: I can --"

"My crew, Sparrow!" It came out less anguished than angry. "I can't abandon them."

"They're grown men; they c'n look after theirselves. Wouldn't be the first time the King's Navy's left someone behind."

"The Navy might," said James Norrington. "I don't."

"Shame, that," said Sparrow reflectively. Then, "Sit up for a mo, would you?"

Norrington did as he was told, hunching forward miserably. Behind him, Jack was leaning over, reaching for something, cursing under his breath.

"Whatever you have in mind," began Norrington savagely, "I'm not --"

Something heavy crashed against the back of his head, and for one last moment the cabin was filled with light. Then the blackness rushed in, painfully, and swept it all away.

* * *

Norrington woke slow and muzzy, head pounding, every bone and sinew in his body complaining of battery. His feet were wet, and wetted anew: his cheek was pressed against gritty black sand, and the waves broke over his boots.

He could smell woodsmoke, hear men shouting, close and closer. This, then, was rescue. He thought it shouldn't feel like loss.

Here was Groves, dropping to his knees beside Norrington, all his heart in his eyes. "Commodore?"

Norrington managed assent: managed, with his lieutenant's help, to sit up. The sun was rising out of the sea, painfully bright, burning away the morning mist. Against the gold, indistinct, Norrington thought he saw the masts and black sails of a ship.

"What of the _Dauntless_?" he said thickly, his mouth dry and cracked with salt.

"The men are jury-rigging her," said Groves. "There's astoundingly little damage to the hull, and we've, ah, negotiated an agreement with the natives. Come, sir: there's meat and drink --"

"Seaworthy?"

"Tomorrow," said Groves. "We'll sail tomorrow."

-end-

**Author's Note:**

> Linked from [LiveJournal](http://viva-gloria.livejournal.com/257658.html) and [Dreamwidth](http://gloriamundi.dreamwidth.org/246032.html) \-- comments and criticism welcome, wherever!


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